In January 2013, Glenn’s wife Tania accidentally flushed her wedding ring. After days of digging up the plumbing in the house and yard, they eventually found it. Glenn couldn’t help himself at the time, and dedicated plenty of broadcast time joking that Tania was trying to send him some kind of message. Well, the tables were turned on radio today when Glenn was forced to admit that he had lost his wedding ring somewhere in the studios – and that wasn’t the only peculiar revelation.

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“I took it off in the makeup room, like two or three weeks ago, and then I put it down on the counter, and then I picked it up. And for some reason, I put it in my pocket and not back on,” Glenn said.

So what did we learn as Glenn went fumbling for excuses?

1) He has a makeup room, where he likes to remove his wedding ring

2) He must have holes in his pockets

3) As many in Dallas pointed out over the past two days, he developed quite the bromance with Simon Sinek. As Stu pointed out, Simon spent most of the afternoon wearing one of Glenn’s sweaters like a letterman jacket. “It was precious” – Pat.

4) Glenn doesn’t have the code to the family safe (or even the house, apparently).

“This is not going to go well for me,” he joked.

“Because you just said you lost your wedding ring after you belittled (Tania) over and over and over?” Pat said.

From all of us at GlennBeck.com, good luck Glenn!

With each passing day, the conflict between Israel and Hamas is resulting in more and more bloodshed and destruction. And the mainstream media continues to paint Israel as the enemy, with many stories focusing on the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire rather than the terrorists who are hiding out next to schools and mosques. But what is really happening the Middle East? Glenn explained on radio this morning.

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“I want to talk to you a little bit about what’s going on in Israel and what I think you really need to pay attention to, what the world needs to hear. But I want to start here first with our values and our principles, not our national interests, but…let’s just say this, our human values. When you see a bully on the street, when you see some guy picking on a little guy, it’s the story of Captain America. You immediately go for the little guy. It’s in our nature when we see a bully,” Glenn said.

“There’s a difference between World War II and Germany and now and people are saying, you know, the Gazans are causing all these problems. Yep. They voted. They voted for Hamas. Yep. Many of them have been raised. Yeah, however, you can’t make go to blanket statement just like we couldn’t make the blanket statement about Germany. You remember what happened? After World War II, once we stopped, we embraced the German people we helped feed them. Because it wasn’t the German people, it was the Nazi ideology,” he continued.

Back in World War 2, it was easy to recognize the Nazi’s as the bullies, not the German people as a whole. But things aren’t so clear today, and Israel’s enemies are working hard to make them look like bullies.

“Why is the Middle East, why is Turkey and everybody else supporting the Gazans…If it’s so wrong, why doesn’t everybody attack Israel? Because once the world gangs up on Israel, Israel wins. As long as Israel looks like the bully on these poor little people, the cause is advanced,” Glenn said.

“And believe me, you do have a reason to feel bad for the Gazans because the Gazans are being used. They are pawns,” he added. “Nobody is really listening to them. Hamas, they’re not listening to them. They’re indoctrinating them.”

“This is why we have to love the Palestinians and the Gazans. We have to see their plight, we have to hear it. And it has nothing to do with Israel. It has everything to do with their entire plight in the Middle East. Nobody is listening to them. Nobody,” he continued.

Glenn concluded:

So here’s what I want you to know about Israel and the Middle East, we are going to be sucked into this thing and there is no winner here. There is no winner here. Israel is strong enough if we do not condemn them. If we are very, very clear. My wife and I have helped build an underground hospital wing, Mercury One I think also helped build this hospital wing that takes in the Gazan children. Takes in the terrorists. You’re blown up in the street. Takes you there. They’re not torturing you. They don’t drag your body through the streets. They heal you.

So we have to continue to do that, Israel should be focusing on those things. We can’t lose our way. But this is why Massie I believe is now talking about this 9/11 report and saying these documents have got to be shown to the American people, because the case is going to be made that we need to get involved. Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, they’re all involved.

This is the beginning of the caliphate and the reason why Israel is now under attack has nothing really to do with Israel. Even Israel is a pawn. This is a game for the caliphate. This is a game for who is going to control the Middle East. And so that’s why everybody is attacking Israel. That’s why — everybody’s eyes are on Israel. And both sides are ratcheting it up.

Because once you start this movement and you gather all this rage, it will morph. Mark my words: This is the beginning of a very long war in the Middle East that we have no way to solve. This is all about the caliphate. This is a — this is the beginning of a civil war in the Middle East that has very little to do with Israel, other than they’re the easiest red meat to hold up in the window.

In an attempt to give the President some advice (editor’s tangent: President Obama, we don’t always write the most flattering things about your job performance here at GlennBeck.com, but we say this with the utmost sincerity. The LAST person on Earth you want to take career advice from is Ed Schultz, Ed Schultz said, “Mr. President, go on the road. Bring it from your loins the way you did to get re-elected, the way it was described by Axelrod. Just go out there and let them have it for the next hundred days.”

What is wrong with him?

Well, if the obsession with “loins” wasn’t enough, it was the divisive nature of his comments that really bothered Glenn.

“This is the kind of talk that both of us, both sides have got to stop. The bring it from your loins just because it’s embarrassing, but let him have it for the next hundred days. We got to stop,” Glenn said. “What good will that do and it will only divide us more.”

Watch Glenn’s full reaction below:

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There’s been a lot of impeachment talk swirling in the press lately, and according to the media it’s the racist Republicans and tea partiers who just want to take down Obama. But is it? Is it really? Nope. The data journalists over at FiveThirtyEight.com decided to take a look at the numbers and came up with a surprising conclusion: “Democrats Are Way More Obsessed With Impeachment Than Republicans”.

Earlier today, Nate Silver tweeted out the story below, noting that MSNBC has brought up impeachment 448 times, while FOX News has only mentioned it 95 times.

So what does this mean? Glenn addressed the issue on radio this morning:

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“This time period is going to be remembered as the biggest heist ever,” Glenn said. “This is the biggest robbery of the treasuries of the world of all time. It really is. We’re not being told the truth. We’re being split apart so we don’t feel like we belong anywhere and we feel like we’re out of control and our governments, are aiding this. They are the ones pushing this. And whether they’re doing it intentionally or not, I think this is clear when NBC is 448 times talking about impeachment Fox is 95, 14 times in congress and 11 of those come from Democrats. You know where this agenda is coming from.”

“This agenda is a fundraiser. So they are playing on the lowest common denominator: the people who are not paying attention,” he added.

Glenn warned the American people that they must now play the role of Solomon in the ongoing battle between the extreme left and extreme right over the future of America.

You’re a judge. Two women come in. And you have to decide which one is telling the truth. Both of them is saying, this is my child. This is my baby. One is saying, she stole my baby. She stole my baby. The other one is saying, No, I didn’t. That’s my baby. She stole my baby. Please your honor, return my baby. He doesn’t know. There’s no way to do blood tests or anything else. He has no idea whose baby this is. So he listens to them. Both rant and rave. And I got to believe it was really emotional approximately one of them was clearly lying which had to set the other one off even more. I can’t believe you would actually say this, this is my child. Your Honor, please she’s a monster and the other woman if she was a good actress would be doing the same thing. Oh, my God, Your Honor please listen to me. She’s taken my baby. So Solomon doesn’t know what to do. That’s where the American people are, we don’t know what to do. I’ll give half the baby to each of you. Cut the baby in half. What happens? Solomon can make his decision because the real mother says stop, stop, stop, it’s her baby. That’s when he knew. Because only a mother, the only one that was not in for vengeance or destruction, but was in in for the best interest of the child said fine it’s blame it on me. It’s me. It’s me. I was the one lying.

“You must be Solomon,” Glenn said, ” Because Americans don’t know who to turn to anymore. And you’re not going to out evil. You’re not going to out gutter people who are in the gutter. You’re not going to call people worse names because they’ll call you worst name too. I mean, it just keeps going. You’re not going to do it. Light conquers darkness. Light conquers darkness. So we have to be light.”

Front page image courtesy of the AP

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Glenn hasn’t watched a ton of Sharknado or the sequel Sharknado Two: The Second One, but he knows with absolute certainty that there is a powerful, important message behind the film. One that has a powerful message about the dangers of climate change, and how the perils of global warming could result in a true natural disaster of shark-meets-tornado proportions.

Ok, maybe not.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Tamron Hall, the film’s writer Thunder Levin said, “You know we just felt it was time that the world was alerted to the perils of global warming and bio-meteorology, so it was just a matter of doing our research and getting the facts out to everybody.”

While he said it with a straight face, it’s hard to believe that anyone would take his comments seriously. The radio guys thought it was pretty clear he was mocking the climate change alarmists, but just in case they offered him a platform to explain his concerns. Or continue to rip on people who think a Sharknado could really happen. Either way, it should make for good radio.

“Here’s what we can do, see if you can get him on the air and see if we can I have a serious discussion about how Sharknados can actually happen. See if he can present some of the science with us, some of the concerns he has,” Glenn said. “I would like to further this with him. I would like him to come on and tell us. He’s coming into a very, very friendly room that can’t wait to hear the serious message he’s trying to get across.”

You would think that after winning his defamation lawsuit against Chris Kyle’s estate, Jesse Ventura would have the good sense to be satisfied and not continue to attack the fallen SEAL’s memory or family. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Instead, he’s hit the media circuit, defending – and failing – how he plans to spend the money that he won from Kyle’s widow.

When asked what he planned to do with the money, Ventura sarcastically replied that he planned to pay his lawyers.

CBS’s Gayle King asked, “He served his country. His wife is a widow. They have two children, a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old. The estate has to pay out a million dollars in fees. What are you going to do with the money?”

“Pay my lawyers,” Ventura replied. “Again, like I said, I didn’t have an insurance company paying the freight for me. I had to pay my own. You know, it’s unfortunate, but the jury rendered that decision. Jesse Ventura did not render how and why the money would be paid. That came from a jury, not from me. So if you’re going to question the money, question the jury. They made that decision. Gov. Jesse Ventura did not.”

Isn’t it a little weird that he speaks in the third person?

Ventura appears to suffer from a distinct lack of self-awareness, as he can’t seem to understand why his reputation may be ruined among he fellow veterans over the lawsuit.

“Some suggest that you may have damaged your reputation by pursuing a lawsuit against the widow,” CBS’s Charlie Rose asked Ventura during an interview.

“Well, if seeking the truth damages you, then we live in a pretty sorry world, don’t we? When the truth can hurt you and the truth came out, it never occurred, and that’s all I sought from it. And I’m already damaged. I can’t go to a SEAL reunion anymore,” Ventura said.

Is it really Ventura’s search for the truth the reason his reputation has been damaged? Glenn certainly doesn’t think so, and said his reputation has been destroyed among the SEALs because of how the lawsuit is impacting the Kyle family.

Glenn described what it was like Chris Kyle’s funeral:

The one thing you learned, they’re brothers and come hell or high water doesn’t matter how you you feel about them. If one of them falls, they all stand behind the widow and the family. And I’ve never seen anything so powerful as these SEALs all in their uniform standing behind Chris Kyle’s wife as she is struggling to deliver a eulogy. And with military precision and honor as she is breaking down, the SEALs surround her and just quietly slowly put their gloved hand on her back. It was remarkable. And that is what our military men are like. That’s what our SEALs are like. When a brother has fallen, no matter what you thought of him, you do not sue the wife. You comfort the wife. You comfort and aid the children.

Does it sound like Ventura is treating the Kyle family with the same level of respect and honor as the rest of the SEAL community?

Watch the interview below:

Wednesday morning, Glenn played audio of Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) calling for the government to declassify twenty-eight pages of the 9/11 report that have been hidden away from the American people. He claimed those pages do not present a threat to national security, and that they would fundamentally change people’s understanding of what happened that day. Wednesday night, Rep. Massie joined The Glenn Beck Program to discuss in more detail why those pages should be released and how the American people will react.

“Tonight, we’re going to shine the light on something that has been kept in the dark for nearly 13 years going back to the Bush administration and even before,” Glenn said. “It’s going to lead to some ugly truths, but no matter how embarrassing it might be for the Bush administration, for the Clintons, or whoever else is involved, if it’s embarrassing for our allies, a nation that claims to stand for truth and justice must adhere to that principle every time, not when it’s easy, not when it’s in our best interest or our political interest, but when it is a value every time.”

“Citizens, especially the families of the 9/11 victims, deserve to know the truth. Now, some congressmen were recently given access to 28 classified pages from a 9/11 intelligence report. TheBlaze has shown this before, but we’ve just shown you the blacked-out pages. Now, after reading it, the whole page, one congressman who we’re about to talk to here, said he couldn’t go more than a few sentences each paragraph without having to pause and ‘rearrange his understanding of history.’ That’s remarkable.”

“Here’s the story, back in 2002, a congressional report was released called Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. We have gone through this, we have talked about it. People back in 2002 or 2003 were asking for more of it. It’s why we have these conspiracy theories in the first place.

“But 28 pages of the report, about 7,200 words, were redacted and deemed classified by President George W. Bush. Now, his reasoning was a vague reference to it being national security risk. Normally, and the reason why this didn’t work, is normally only sensitive names and contracts and covert agents, etc., are redacted, but this had 28 pages that were entirely blacked out.”

“And at the time, 46 senators, that’s half of the Senate, led by Chuck Schumer, wrote a letter to the president asking to declassify the pages. Schumer claimed that the redacted information was related to, and I want to quote, ‘specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11th hijackers while they were in the United States’ – probably screams Saudi Arabia, and that’s what it did. He went directly to claiming Saudi Arabia was the primary source of this foreign funding.”

While Congressman Massie can’t reveal exactly what he read in those redacted pages, he can speak out about why it’s important they be released. He talked to Glenn about those issues Wednesday night:

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A transcript of the interview is below:

Glenn: Congressman Massie joins me now from Washington, D.C. Congressman, how are you?

Congressman Massie: Doing well, Glenn. Thanks for having me on.

Glenn: I’m concerned because I know you can’t say anything because anything that you say can and will be held against you, so, you know, you’re going to have to talk as cryptically here, but I was gravely disturbed by your description where you said you had to stop and refigure history every couple of sentences. Can you give us any other description other than that?

Congressman Massie: Well, absolutely. You know, when 9/11 happened and shortly thereafter, we were all like sponges, we’re trying to absorb as much information to understand the who, the what, the why, the where, but at some point you quit collecting information because there’s no more information to be had or you think there’s no more information. And it all sort of sets up like concrete in your brain.

Well, as I was reading these 28 pages, I had to try and take apart that concrete that had set up, my own understanding of what had led up to 9/11 and what had enabled it. And then also what really hurt me was to wonder why did my government keep this from me for 13 years? What were their motives?

You know, there will be anger, frustration, and embarrassment when these 28 pages finally come out. Those are all emotions that you describe that I had while I was reading these pages. These are emotions that I think the public will have when they find out.

Glenn: Here’s what worries me, and I want to make sure that we’re not talking about this. We went to war, we’ve killed a lot of people, and we used our own righteous indignation or righteous anger to stop this. Have we done something morally reprehensible here? Is it going to change our understanding of war?

Congressman Massie: Well, you’re right. We fought two wars ostensibly to keep another 9/11 from happening, and I’m not ready to relitigate those wars and the causes for going to war. But here’s why I’m coming out right now and making this one of my priorities to get this out there is we’re talking about getting involved in two other wars, the war in Syria and a war in Iraq. And I don’t want to relitigate the other wars, but look, before we jump into these wars, we need to understand what really caused 9/11.

And if we’re going to use 9/11 as a motivation to get involved in these civil wars in the Middle East, then I think the American public and surely to goodness all of the congressmen up here who are going to be voting on these wars need to read these pages and understand what truly caused 9/11 and who our friends are and who our enemies are.

Glenn: Okay, I mean, I know you’re not going to tell me, but this sounds like we’re talking about Saudi Arabia, but I want, and that just could be my bias from the things that we know from the intelligence community that have been told to us, we know there is a bias on that. I don’t think anybody would be surprised, and let’s use both Clinton and Bush, I mean Sandy Berger went in to smuggle papers out of the National Archives in his underpants. You don’t do that and then get pardoned by the guy from the other side if they’re not trying to kick dirt over the trail.

And I don’t think personally that it was anybody in our administration was doing anything nefarious or, you know, anything like that. It just looked bad. It was just embarrassing because they might’ve been, you know, taking too many walks with too many princes or whatever. Is this stuff that will deeply tear us apart, or will this be just, has our government been worse than just sloppy and greedy at times? I’m trying to figure out a way to ask you these questions.

Congressman Massie: No, this will not tear our country apart. It will be embarrassing. It will not endanger us to release this information, but the American public needs to have it. I would tell you to look to maybe Bob Graham, Senator Bob Graham, who was privy to even more information than I have in those 28 pages since he was on the intelligence committee. You know, he’s leading this charge.

I will say, you know, there are things I can’t even tell my wife that I learned about in these soundproof SCIFs, and those 28 pages are included in that category. Congressman Walter Jones from North Carolina, he’s the one who sponsored this resolution. It’s called House Resolution 428, and you know, they thanked him for sponsoring that by the establishment primaried him and spent ten times as much money as him back in his district this spring, and he still won because he represents the people and truth and transparency.

But those are the kind of risks that, you know, we bring upon ourselves by speaking out. But now is the time, and I’ll tell you, you mentioned the families. You played a clip from the families of the victims. This needs to come out because there are things being litigated in court right now that pertain to these 28 pages, and the families of the victims deserve this information and this evidence because there is culpability here, and there is liability. And you know, if our judicial system is going to work its way, the evidence and the truth needs to be there.

Glenn Congressman, thank you very much, and you keep up the fight. Let us know, I’ve directed TheBlaze to cover any and all, so you can count on us. Just let us know how we can help. Appreciate it.

Congressman Massie: Thank you, Glenn. People need to contact the White House. They need to contact their congressmen and their senators.

Glenn: Thank you. God bless. Listen, TheBlaze is going to stay on this as much as we can until the information just dries up, but this is not a partisan thing. This is a bipartisan thing. This is about the truth. This is about who are we really, and as the congressman said, before we go any further, we have to know who the bad guys are, we have to know what we’ve done.

Let the chips fall where they may. I mean, if George Bush was involved in doing some things, and he was buddies with somebody and whatever, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. That’s in the past. Let’s chart the course on the future, and the only way we can do that is if we build it on a foundation of truth.

Glenn has been talking a lot about the qualities that make a great leader, especially the idea that great leaders first and foremost serve others. And it’s not just the CEO – that idea applies to any person at any level. Someone on the bottom of the ladder can have just as much of an impact as someone at the top, as long as they are leading by example and showing service to others. But the qualities that make a good leader don’t have to be limited to a single person, they can extend to a company’s culture and how they treat their customers. In fact, a Canadian bank is taking that idea of service to others that Glenn has been talking about and and putting it at the heart of a new campaign to award some of their loyal patrons.

TD Canada decided they wanted to say “thank you” to their customers by turning their ATMs into Automated Thanking Machines, and they certainly went above and beyond in their appreciation.

The video’s slogan is “A thank you can change somebody’s day”, but some of those gifts are sure to last a whole lot longer.

A mother was given plane tickets to visit her sick daughter in Trinidad, shortly after she went in for an operation to battle cancer. Another woman, who has never been able to take her kids anywhere, was given a family vacation to Disneyland. A huge Blue Jays fan got to throw out the first pitch at his favorite team’s baseball game.

Chris Stamper, SVP Corporate Marketing atTD Bank Group, told Buzzfeed that they were looking for a unique way to show appreciation and thanks to some of their most loyal customers.

“Our local branch employees know their customers really well and often have close relationships with them. Some have been through tough times and some are just wonderfully kind and caring people,” he said.

In what should come as no surprise, the video has already accumulated more than 2.7 million views

You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘the power of now’, a self-help phrase that tells people they need to live in the present. But Glenn’s guest on the radio show today, Rabbi Irwin Kula, said people need to stop thinking about “now” and focus on the important word in the English language: “No”.

“We have impulses, we have desires, and they flow up very quickly, our anger, our lust, our greed, our – I want that. I want to eat that piece of pizza. Those wants and desires flow up, those impulses flow up, and the key to being a healthy, moral, flourishing, happy person is actually being able to say the very simple word ‘no’,” Kula explained.

Watch the discussion below:

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Lots of companies make great products. Lots of politicians have potential. But very few people are able to become real, true leaders. Author Simon Sinek spoke with Glenn on TV last night about what it is about great leaders that they all have in common – the answers may surprise you.

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A transcript of the segment is below:

Glenn: Okay, I want to introduce you to a new friend, and that probably would’ve caused him some consternation if I would’ve said that a couple months ago, but a new friend and a guy I think we think an awful lot alike and that I think is important for you to know and read. He is the guy who now has Leaders Eat Last, a new book that is out, and also Start with Why. He has changed my life about a year ago or started to clarify what I kind of instinctively knew to be true, and now I think is in the midst of changing my life and really helping me on a path that I think with you we really will be the people that can really change the world.

I want to start, Simon Sinek is his name. I want to start, Simon, first with just a little bit about this vacuum of leadership and this idea that our leaders have failed us and where are the leaders? And we all say, you know, where is Ronald Reagan or where is Margaret Thatcher or where is Pope John Paul? The leaders of the past are gone, but that’s because we’re looking for them. Shouldn’t we be looking for them inside?

Simon: Yeah, I mean, we want to be led. We like leaders, you know? Nobody wants to go to work and be managed. We want to go to work and be led. I think one of the challenges we face is our own definition of leadership. We think that leadership comes with authority, and sometimes it does, and it’s certainly more efficient when a leader has some authority.

But I know many people who sit at the highest levels of whatever organization they run, but they’re not leaders. You know, they have authority, and we do what they tell us because they have authority over us, but we wouldn’t follow them. And I know many people who sit at the bottom of organizations that have no authority, but they’ve made a choice, a choice to look after the person to the left of them and a choice to look after the person to the right of them. And this is basically and fundamentally what leadership is. It is a choice.

Glenn: Are real leaders usually found at times of crisis? Because like September 11 or here I have this whole wall that is Abraham Lincoln’s face, he’s not the guy that you would pick out and go “I’m going to follow that guy,” but it happened on September 11 too. People who were just coworkers all of a sudden took charge and said, “You, you, and you, let’s go.” Are you born a leader?

Simon: Leadership is a skill like any other that some based on how they grew up and the way that they were raised and the sort of lessons they learned from their parents or their grandparents or their friends, you know, they have a talent. They have a talent for it. Some kids are great at basketball, they have a talent for it, and some kids have to work really, really, really hard to get good at basketball. Leadership is the same. It is a skill. Some have a natural capacity for it. Some of us have to work harder at it, but it is a practice. It’s not something we do at work and then we stop being a leader when we leave work.

Glenn: The key principles of leadership?

Simon: The key idea behind leadership is putting the well-being of others sometimes before ourselves, considering the well-being of others. So a great example of how to think about leadership is something I witnessed when I visited Quantico Marine Base which is where the Marines select their officers. And I did not hear a single Marine say the words I am a leader, I want to be a leader, I aspire to be a leader, I think I have what it takes to be a good leader. Those words were never uttered.

The words you do hear are I’m a leader of Marines, I believe I have what it takes to be a leader of Marines, I aspire to be a good leader of Marines. In other words, even in their own vernacular, they see leadership as a service to another human being, a leader of Marines, not just this leader, not this position or title to be held.

And I think that’s what we all have to remember, which is leadership is not a rank to attain, it’s a responsibility. It’s an honor. It’s much like being a parent, you know? The choice to have kids is the fun part. The choice to raise children is the difficult part.

Glenn: I’m amazed because the first time I spoke to you I said the same thing to you about your book, those are all biblical principles, and you’re not coming to it from a place of the Bible, but they’re all universal principles.

Simon: They’re human principles.

Glenn: They’re human principles, but I mean, it is the same as, you know, when Jesus says the first will be last, and you know, she’s greater because she took her hair and washed my feet when that at the time was you wanted to get around those people. But I serve you. I’ll wash your feet, and it’s the same principle back then.

Simon: There is no expectation of anything in return.

Glenn: Right, and back then they didn’t get it, and we still don’t get it.

Simon: And this is why when we find great leaders, the reason we want to follow them is because they serve as the example. They give us permission. They show us what it looks like. They lead the way. You know, leadership comes with risk. You go first means you’re the one who may get in trouble or get your head cut off for taking that risk and –

Glenn: So does good leadership have anything to do with shedding all the trappings of the leaders? I mean, because some people will say well, they’re rich or they’re this or that. You can still be – that doesn’t matter.

Simon: There’s no relationship whatsoever. You know, as a leader, you know, we’re hierarchical animals naturally, and there’s basis for this, which is we used to live in populations no bigger than 150 people. This presents a bit of a problem. You know, these austere times someone brings back food, we all rush in to eat. If you’re lucky enough to be built like a linebacker, you shove your way to the front. If you’re the “artist” of the family, you get an elbow in the face.

This is a bad system for cooperation because the odds are I’m not going to alert the person who punched me in the face this afternoon I’m not going to alert them to danger this evening when they’re sleeping, you know, I’m just going to leave them.

Glenn: Correct.

Simon: So there’s a different system that had to evolve. And we are hierarchical animals. We’re constantly assessing and judging each other, who’s alpha, who’s beta. And when we assess that someone is alpha to us, and sometimes it’s a formal hierarchy, you know, it’s a higher rank, and sometimes it’s an informal thing. And it’s not a constant, it’s a relative system. When we assess that someone is alpha, we voluntarily step back and allow alphas to eat first.

Alphas get first choice of meat and first choice of mate. And so though we may not get the best choice of meat, we will get to eat eventually, and we don’t get an elbow in the face – good system. And to this day this system exists and is alive and well. Not a single person has a problem with somebody more senior than them in the company making a higher salary. That doesn’t bother us. We may think they’re ineffective, we may think they’re an idiot, but it actually doesn’t bother us that they get a higher salary because they’re higher level than us in the company. It doesn’t bother us that they have a bigger office or a better parking space.

Glenn: However, it is in our society being touted as a bad thing.

Simon: And here’s the reason, because none of that stuff comes for free. You see, we are okay with our leaders being given preferential treatment and having the trappings and the perks if they’re willing to uphold their responsibility as a leader. It doesn’t come for free. So the group is not stupid. You see, we expect that when danger threatens the tribe, when danger threatens the group, that it will be the guy who’s stronger, better fed with all that confidence who will rush towards the danger to protect us.

Glenn: So the reason why that’s happening is because the big guys got the bailouts, they all kept their jobs, nobody paid the price, but when there was trouble, they cut all of those jobs down there.

Simon: And this is why we have visceral contempt for some of the banking CEOs and their disproportionate salaries and perks. It’s not the numbers. It’s that they have violated the very human definition of what it means to be a leader. We know that they allowed people to be sacrificed so they could keep what was theirs, or worse, they sacrificed their people so they could keep what was theirs.

What if I told you we were going to give Nelson Mandela $150 million bonus? No big deal. How about Mother Teresa, $250 million bonus? No one has a problem with the numbers or the perks or the better life or the people carrying your bags or calling you sir. No one has an issue with that.

Glenn: In fact, I had a problem when Jimmy Carter wouldn’t carry his bags because I was like he’s the president.

Simon: He’s the president, exactly. The issue we have is when you are given all of those advantages, and you are not willing to uphold the responsibility of the leader, in other words, you think it’s about you.

There was a great story I was told which I’ll share with you which I think encapsulates what it means to be a leader. It was a former undersecretary of defense, and he retired about a year prior. And he was giving a speech at a large conference of about 1,000 people. And he’s standing on the stage giving his prepared remarks sipping his coffee from a Styrofoam cup he had. And he stops and interrupts himself. And he looks down at the cup, and he looks up at the audience.

He says, “You know, I spoke at this exact same conference last year, except last year I was still the undersecretary. And I flew here business-class, and there was someone to meet me at the airport. And they drove me to the hotel. And they’d already checked me in, and they took me up to my room. I came down the next morning, another person was waiting for me, drove me to this same venue. They took me in the back entrance. They took me to the green room, and they gave me a cup of coffee in a beautiful ceramic cup.”

He says, “I’m no longer the undersecretary. I flew here coach. I took a cab from the airport to the hotel. I checked myself in. This morning I took another cab to this venue. I walked in the front door, found my way backstage, and when I asked somebody, ‘Do you have any coffee,’ he pointed to the coffee machine in the corner, and I poured myself a cup of coffee into this here Styrofoam cup.”

He says, “The lesson is the ceramic cup was never meant for me, it was meant for the position I held. I deserve a Styrofoam cup.” And this is the point, I think a lot of people in leadership positions believe that all those perks that are afforded to them are for them. It’s not. It’s for the position they hold. And they have a responsibility, because, by the way, when they leave, they will give those things to the next person.

And I think one of the humilities of leadership is that we have to remember though we were given these things, and we can enjoy them, I mean, let’s be honest, it’s good, it’s nice, it’s good to be the king, it feels good, we get all of these advantages, but it all comes at a price.

First of all, it’s given to the position and not to you, that’s number one. And number two, we have to “pay” for those things by offering and sometimes sacrificing what is in our interest for the good of those around us or the good of those who have committed themselves to see our visions come to life. That’s the responsibility of leadership.

Glenn: We have about three and a half minutes, but I want to tell you real quick you will understand why I’ve been saying about mercy, mercy, mercy, justice and mercy, we have to serve one another, if you read his book, Leaders Eat Last. And if you missed the radio show, listen to I think it was hour one and two today on the radio show, never had a guest on for three hours and did it today, and it’s fantastic.

And it’s really important that you watch that and read his book. Let me ask you this, we’re not people on paper that should be sitting down with each other.

Simon: You and me?

Glenn: Why are you here?

Simon: I’m here for the same reason you’re here, which is one, I have an insatiably curious mind, and I believe that people who have different perspectives than I have have something to teach me that I can learn. I know enough to know that I know very little, that I don’t know everything.

And I think we have a bad habit in this country of listening to the people who tell us what we already agree with or tell us what want to hear because it feels good and because we agree with it. And you know, if your politics are left, you listen to left media, if your politics are right, you listen to right media, and never shall the twain interact or mix.

Glenn: And you don’t put yourself in either of those categories?

Simon: Oh no, I consider myself a common sensist, and I will work with anyone. And I’m very open about it. You know, I’ll get calls from Republicans, and I’ll tell them, yeah, just so you know, I’m going to give the same advice to Democrats. And when Democrats call, I say just so you know, I’m going to give the same advice to Republicans because my goal is that we find common cause and work together.

And so the reason I wanted to meet you was because I was told I should meet you, is because I was told that, you know, you disagree with him. I’m like really? Because I’ve never met him, you know? And we may have not got along, and so I would have wasted an hour of time to find out that I didn’t like him. And instead, I found an hour of time that made me craving wanting more.

And what I love is that you and I seem to represent an example of what the rest of us could do. Instead of hearing the sound bite and forming our opinion and saying, “I hate that person, I hate that side, I hate that group,” to rather say, “I’d like to learn more. I think we both want the same thing.”

Glenn: Without getting into specifics, you and I have had a couple of times where I think both of us have gone either on the phone or in e-mail or something we’ve gone okay, all right, maybe that came out wrong.

Simon: That’s not what I meant.

Glenn: That’s not what I meant.

Simon: Because we find ourselves going at each other and the other one going whoa, that’s not what I meant.

Glenn: Right.

Simon: And I think the things we say are not always the things we mean. Let me rephrase that, the words that people hear are not always what we mean. And so I think it’s the responsibility to try and be as articulate as possible obviously, but I think it’s the responsibility of the listener or the person receiving information to say let me understand what you mean, what do you mean by that, let me repeat back to you in my own words and tell me is this what you’re trying to say? Because I think 99 times out of 100, I think we just completely misunderstand each other.

Glenn: You learn that from any marriage counselor. Anyway, the name of the book is Leaders Eat Last, and Start with Why, either one, both of them, highly recommended. Simon, thank you.